Abortion
Study: When tests detect birth defects, babies can still be born healthy worldmag
Researchers at the University of Cambridge, who published their results in the journal Nature Communications, found even when half the cells of an early-stage mouse embryo were abnormal, the embryo was still able to fully repair itself because the abnormal cells self-destructed and healthy cells replaced them. In many cases, the process completely repaired a defective embryo, leaving it with all healthy cells even though some of the placental cells were still abnormal. Even in cases where 75 percent of an early-stage embryo’s cells were abnormal, the ratio of normal cells increased as the embryo developed.
War
China: US-Philippine military ties invoke 'Cold War mentality' timesofindia.indiatimes
The ministry's comments came shortly after Thursday's announcement that the US would send troops and planes to the Philippines for more frequent rotations and will increase joint sea and air patrols with Philippine forces in the South China Sea.
False Peace
Just war theory should be abandoned, says conference hosted by Vatican catholicherald.co.uk
Participants...have called for the Catholic Church to renounce its just war doctrine and for Pope Francis to write an encyclical on nonviolence and “just peace.”
“The time has come for our church to be a living witness and to invest far greater human and financial resources in promoting a spirituality and practice of active nonviolence and in forming and training our Catholic communities in effective nonviolent practices,” the statement said.
Israel
UNESCO adopts resolution ignoring Jewish ties to Temple Mount jpost
...the UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aksa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif, except for two references to the Western Wall Plaza that were put in parenthesis.
Israel To Deploy Extra Troops Around Temple Mount Ahead Of Passover jewishbusinessnews
The prime minister announced, “Ahead of Passover, all kinds of extremist elements are spreading lies about our policy on the Temple Mount to cause riots and stir things up. We are working against these inciters. We will increase our forces in places of friction; we will use additional defensive measures.” Netanyahu was speaking at a pre-Passover toast with the Union of Local Authorities.
Israeli cabinet to hold first-ever meeting in Golan Heights to affirm sovereignty jns.org
Israel’s Channel 2 reported Friday that Israel’s cabinet will hold its weekly meeting in the Golan Heights on Sunday to “symbolize” Israel’s sovereignty in the area. According to recent reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is upset over indications that a negotiated deal on the Syrian civil war that is being worked on by world powers would declare the Golan Heights as Syrian territory.
See also Netanyahu, Putin to meet in Moscow on Syria, Palestinians
Palestinians
PA readies to issue ‘State of Palestine’ passports timesofisrael
According to a senior PA official, the directive to change the official travel documents, which currently only feature the PA emblem, was announced without Israel’s approval, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.
Palestinians: We Will Not Accept a Jewish Israel gatestoneinstitute.org
The Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is based on the argument that such a move would mean giving up the "right of return" for millions of "refugees" into Israel. This refusal is also based on the continued denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land.
Let us take a moment to clarify this: the Palestinian Authority wants a Palestinian state next to Israel while at the same time flooding Israel with millions of refugees. That, of course, is something to which no Israeli government could ever agree. Even more crucial is the Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish right to the land. Such denial is a longstanding pillar of the official Palestinian narrative. Even those who say they have accepted the two-state solution are not prepared to recognize any Jewish link to or history in the land.
Terrorism
Canadian hostages in Philippines plead for their lives ctvnews.ca v
“This is a final, urgent appeal to governments -- Philippine, Canadian – and families,” Ridsdel says in the video. “If $300 million (Philippine pesos) is not paid for me by 3 p.m. on April 25, they will behead me.”
Video is a general news report and does NOT include the hostage video
North Korea
US researchers see more signs NKorea is producing plutonium bigstory.ap.org
"The presence of a loaded flatcar, together with the presence of exhaust plumes, suggest that North Korea is preparing or conducting a reprocessing campaign to separate more plutonium for weapons," says the analysis by Joseph S. Bermudez, a specialist in satellite imagery and North Korea's military.
3D Printing
Swapping plaster casts for 3-D printing phys.org
The main product is called NovaCast, a cast made with 3D printing, replacing traditional casts. It has the advantage of being 10 times lighter, removable, aesthetically superior, and can be personalized. Patients can even bathe with it.
Space
No Breakthrough Yet: Stephen Hawking's Interstellar 'Starshot' Faces Challenges space
So making Starshot happen doesn't depend on a huge technological leap, such as would be required to make fusion power feasible. But the project still faces significant challenges, said Jonathan McDowell, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who isn't involved in Starshot.
Future Tech
WHY JAPAN IS EXCITED ABOUT THE 2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS newsweek
If all goes according to plan, visitors to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be awestruck before the sporting contests even begin. Attendees will be shuttled around the city by self-driving taxis. They’ll enter a newly built national stadium with the swipe of a pass, get verified by facial recognition software and be guided to their seats in one of 10 languages on a smartphone app. They may gaze up at the night sky from anywhere in Tokyo to see an artificial meteor shower show unfolding 50 miles above their heads.
There's also a longer article (and the first is pretty long) with images. Note the author uses some mildly crude language at a couple points: 8 Reasons Why the Tokyo Olympics Will Be the Most Futuristic We've Ever Seen.
Samsung to Launch a Foldable Smartphone That Easily Squeezes Into Your Pocket industrytap v
The Smartlet folds in two like a book and will look like a regular 5” smartphone, slightly smaller than the new Samsung Galaxy S7. It can be expanded by being pulled up by the user. Once unfolded, this device will expand to 7”.
Ultrathin organic material enhances e-skin display phys.org v
Integrating electronic devices with the human body to enhance or restore body function for biomedical applications is the goal of researchers around the world.
Weapons
BAE Systems' Archerfish hunts down sea mines gizmag
Once the ROV has been dropped into the water from its launch cradle, its remotely-located human operator can guide guide it down towards the mine using a fiber optics communications cable that leads back up to the helicopter. Using its sonar and low-light video, they're able to see when it has found the mine, and are able to then instruct it to shoot a shaped explosive charge at the target to detonate it.
Banking
America's Big Banks Still Can't Figure Out How to Save Themselves fortune
The reason this matters to you and me is that these eight banks are deemed to be “systemically important” (i.e. if one or more of them fail, it could bring the economy to its knees just as we experienced in the Great Recession).
End of the World
What is Coming? Elite Feverishly Building Survival Bunkers: "Fear Of Uprising From The 99%" zerohedge v w!
The company behind the construction of the sprawling complexes, Vivos, says the facilities are for the “protection of high net worth individuals” in the event of apocalyptic-style scenarios during which “millions will perish or worse yet, struggle to survive as victims”.
Ok, I know - this one screams conspiracy theory. And yet...so interesting :) Visit Vivos website v (company selling this service) for more info.
High Rise to the end of the world: a brief history of overpopulation panic theguardian w!
[Overpopulation is] not an exclusively modern fear. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb (pdf), a cautionary tome warning that population management threatened to spiral out of control, creating scarcity, and that the answer lay in reducing global growth rate to zero. 1968 was also the year in which the Club of Rome was founded, with business leaders sponsoring MIT scientists to model future scenarios of resource deprivation and population growth.
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